Sitting down to write this has reminded me that I have a load of old bike pics that I really should get around to scanning.
I'll run with what I have for the moment and will add pics as I scan them.
After spending my college years running (and regularly rebuilding) a Suzuki GT 200 X5 I eventually started earning a decent wage and decided I'd had enough of aging two strokes.
I needed something more substantial, something more practical, something more reliable.
Something like...
1979-Guzzi-V50-II by
Martin Fay, on Flickr
It was tired and tatty when I bought it having been badly resprayed orange at some point. After a few months of electrical gremlins and bits falling off I bit the bullet, bought a genuine Guzzi workshop manual and stripped it apart. The frame and and cycle parts were powder coated black. The bodywork was resprayed (by me) in LeMans style red with black stripe, the engine and gearbox were stripped, cleaned and rebuilt with new seals and gaskets. The wiring was properly sorted. Hagon Shocks, BT45 tyres, Goodridge brake lines, fork brace, stainless exhaust with gattling gun silencers all depleted my wallet. The rotten old seat was replaced with a rock hard NOS seat from a mark III which I was told was the last one available. (my cat plucked holes in it within a week - oh how I laughed!)
After all this work it looked great, sounded even better and was utterly reliable.
It was also physically tiny.
Solo use was fine but two up with throwovers was cramped.
So I resigned myself to the only sane course of action open to a young male.
I needed a second bike!
My girlfriend at the time (now my wife) had also tired of two strokes so we did a deal for a pair of matching 1995 Kawasaki GPX250 Ninjas (No pics for now). These could manage 100MPH, 80MPG, were surprisingly comfortable and could easily manage touring/camping duties with
throwover panniers and magnetic tank bags. Unfortunately they were plagued with problems and the importers were the pits with supporting warranty issues and I haven't bought another Kawasaki since.
Next up came a 1997 Suzuki Bandit 600.
Bandit-600 by
Martin Fay, on Flickr
This got treated to a Renegade exhaust, K&N filter, Dynojet stage-3 kit, Goodridge hoses, EBC HH pads.
This was daily commuter, two up tourer, track day tool and bike rally regular.
I kept it for a year and sold it with 18K miles on the clock. I can honestly say that I enjoyed every one of those miles but the Horsepower bug had bitten deep.
So the Bandit was sold and this appeared... A 1997 TL1000S.
TL1000S by
Martin Fay, on Flickr
My wife hated it!
This was again treated to a Renegade exhaust, K&N filter, braided hoses, HH pads.
I never did let Suzuki fit the detuned CDI so it was just a bit of a beast.
It also got treated to a Hyperpro steering damper which made the handling a tad more predictable.
This was astounding on the track, impractical for touring and an instrument of torture around town.
It averaged 18MPG in everyday use and would chew up rear tyres in less than 1000 miles.
It was great fun but it had to go when the realities of buying our own home came on the horizon.
To Be Continued...
